Solicitation calls

The telephone sales calls have reached a new high (low?) since the National Do-Not-Call Registry went into effect.

Robocalls, sequential auto-dialers and so on are out of control, and obviously the law is not being enforced well enough to even slow this activity.

Now, Southern California Edison has linked with solar installers to circumvent the law. One of the provisions of the Do-Not-Call Registry does allow calls from entities with which you have existing business relationships. Therefore, Southern California Edison and its affiliates can call you. Now, we are receiving telephone calls trying to sell us solar systems we have never asked for, or had any reasonable expectation for from SCE.

I have been unable to get any of these callers to identify themselves, so I can't complete the online complaint form for the Do-Not-Call Registry. To be honest, I'm not sure it would do any good because all of us have an account with SCE. It would be great to know if somebody has an idea, or a story could be written on how to deal with this problem.

In the meantime, at my house we are responding to unwanted calls with the following statement: "The telephone number you have reached is on the National Do Not Call Registry. First, please remove our number from your list for any future calls. Please tell us the name and location of your business. My family and I make it a policy to never do any business with any company that ignores or circumvents this law."

If you can get this info, go to www.donotcall.gov/complaint/complaintcheck.aspx and fill out the simple form.